How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

no regular celebrity qualifies for assassination.

You have to be an elected official, or otherwise involved in the government before i will knowledge the word assassination. If there is a celebrity that is caught up in some political turmoil and has the ability to effect policy, then i might consider them assassinated.

Assassination is the killing of someone because of they hold a public office or because of something they did in that public office.

If someone kills a president simply because he is president at that time that is an assassination.

If someone kills a president because that particular president did something while in office that is an assassination.

If the president's spouse kills the president for personal reasons that is murder.

Interesting question. John Lennon is often refered to as been assassinated, but his killer simply wanted to be famous. So his motivation didn't have anything to do with John Lennon's political and social activism. We refer Ronald Regan being shot as an assassination attempt, but the shooter did it to impress Jodie Foster whom he was stalking.

I think ChrisRippel hits the nail on the head.

Trish wrote:Interesting question. John Lennon is often refered to as been assassinated, but his killer simply wanted to be famous. So his motivation didn't have anything to do with John Lennon's political and social activism. We refer Ronald Regan being shot as an assassination attempt, but the shooter did it to impress Jodie Foster whom he was stalking.

Trish,

Your examples are interesting and force me to think about clarifying my answers.

When I used the phrase "personal reasons" as the distinctive feature of murder I meant private conflict between the murder and the murderee, not just that the murder had personal reasons such as wanting to impress someone else.

John Lennon and Ronald Reagan were targets of assassins as public figures, because they were public figures, not as private citizens.

Thanks,

Chris

I always thought of assassination as more political than anything else.

The Ritzy wrote:I always thought of assassination as more political than anything else.

Hmmmm, but high officials of the (Catholic) Church--or other high religious leaders from other religions--(including the Pope) have been assasinated. Could the definition be expanded to include eliminating a person of power?
BTW, the word is of Arabic origin meaning "hashish-eater" and referring to some of the first terrorists, fanatical Muslims around the time of the first Crusades, who were said to have eaten hashish before murdering people.

oblivion wrote:

The Ritzy wrote:I always thought of assassination as more political than anything else.

Hmmmm, but high officials of the (Catholic) Church--or other high religious leaders from other religions--(including the Pope) have been assasinated. Could the definition be expanded to include eliminating a person of power?
.

According to Webster's New Unabridged Dictionary, assassinate means, "1. to kill suddenly or secretively, esp. a politically prominant person, murder premediatedly and treacherously. 2. to destroy or harm treacherously and viciously."

I don't know whether this helps, but there you go.

I wonder then is a victim of a "hate crime" then assassinated because the murderer killed them for what that victim represented. For example, Matthew Shepard was targeted, lured, beaten and left to die because a few good ol' boys wanted to target one gay man to terrorize other gay men, but he wasn't famous or a public figure.